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Monday, January 10, 2011

The King’s Speech, awarded 7 Golden Globe awards for best picture of the year, is a movie the viewer “feels” — as advertised. In addition to my enjoyment of the acting, the story, the people, feelings, and relationship facets, I clearly and unexpectedly saw tie-ins to negative self-talk.

No one mentioned NST I’ll admit. If you’ve been reading this blog somewhat regularly and you’ve seen the movie, you’ll recognize that the Duke of York, later King George the 6th was talking to himself all the time. I imagine that he not only thought and felt negatively about himself, but also about others.

About himself:

“I’m a loser. I can’t speak without stammering.”

“I’m an embarrassment to my entire family.”

“I’m an embarrassment to the people of the British Empire.”

“I’ll never be able to speak publicly to inspire, persuade or inform.”

“ I cannot be King of England.”

About others:

“ My father has no compassion for my problem.”

“ My brother David is mindless and self-centered, thinking illogically, and behaving irresponsibly.”

“David was always the favorite. I was treated poorly and ignored by my parents. They never understood or seemed to care.”

The negative self-talk about himself, as well as his stuffed anger about his father, his brother, his parents, and even his first Nanny, contributed to his seeming inability to find his voice, to get rid of his stammer.

The very interesting point to me is that his inner critic probably had as much or a greater impact on his “disability” to speak than did his anger, frustration and other stuffed feelings about his family. In today’s terms, the former could have been fixed with self-help. The latter might require therapy. However, in the movie, the negative self-talk about self and about others was treated and cured in an unorthodox way by an un-credentialed mentor. What does this say about self-help for eliminating negative self-talk, reducing stress, increasing self-esteem and increasing productivity? You can do it! More on unorthodoxy coming up!

WELCOME TO IWO!

It's the beginning of the third year of intelligentwomenonly.com I've started off with some retrospective posts as a reminder to me and you that this blog started out focused on understanding and eliminating negative self-talk. Not surprising since my current book project is Handbook #l for Intelligent Women: Break the Negative Self-Talk Habit.Strong beliefs underlie intelligentwomenonly.com posts:• Research based advice/suggestions/content contain more accurate facts and greater value than pop psychology.• Intelligent girls and women are more likely than intelligent boys and men to limit themselves because of their self-talk.• Negative self-talk is a bad habit, not a neurosis or psychosis. Unfortunately, it's normal in a majority of girls and women.

•The negative self-talk habit has to be eliminated before realistic (or positive thinking) can be learned and maintained.• Positive self-talk cannot create a positive reality even if the negative self-talk habit is broken.• Self-help approaches can work for changing thinking, feeling, and behavioral habits.In the next nine months of 2012, I would love to be able to tell you that the book will be published this year or next. In the meantime I've become intrigued with new brain research about thinking and emotions, particularly applicable and useful for and to women. I'll post no more about gender differences, unless they're wildly interesting, and more about intelligent women's psychology, thinking, feelings, and out front actions. I've added a new red subject box, Writers and Writing, targeted specifically for writers, of course!

I'm still looking for some controversy, disagreement, new information from readers. I'm open to your thoughts about what you'd like to hear more about — or less about!Please send me your comments, suggestions, questions, criticisms — all of you intelligent women out there!